Friday, June 06, 2008

The Minister in charge of the controversial plans to close thousands of post offices has admitted that some profitable branches are being closed.

The news is likely to fire the anger of the tens of thousands of people across the UK who are opposing local closures.

The Government is midway through an unpopular plan to close 2,500 post offices in bid to cut the network’s losses, which are running at £4million a week.

However Pat McFadden, the post office minister, said today that Royal Mail is closing branches that were making profits.

The government has no reason to shut post offices that are profitable. If they are going to close any of the post offices it should be those that aren’t profitable but the government has a totally different agenda. Closing post offices was never about cutting losses it was about something entirely different.

The European Commission is set to propose a full liberalisation of postal services by 2009, which will force member states to stop protecting public operators from national or cross-border competition. Also article 88 of the Treaty of Amsterdam forbids national government from giving state aid without the permission of the EU. Do you think the EU will give permission when they are trying to bring in more competition? I don’t think so either.